Meet Ricardo Campello

Meet Ricardo Campello

Ricardo Campello

Ricardo Campello

Discipline Wave windsurfing

Country Venezuela

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Name

Ricardo Campello

Country

Venezuela

Discipline

Wave windsurfing

Ricardo's story

When I was a kid my dream was to be a Formula 1 racer, even though I lived in front of one of the best surf spots to surf in Brazil, Barra da Tijuca. My Idol was Ayrton Senna, after he died, my big dream stopped. Then I started to play soccer but honestly, I had no talent, no one picked me up to play on their team the meaning of that was that I sucked!!

I had lots of real close friends which were surfers and when I was young I didn't really care about the ocean, one day I decided to try surfing and loved it, I actually wanted to be a pro surfer and I remember doing good on the local grommet events.

My mother?s husband (back then) was a semi pro windsurfer with lots of national and south American titles and he thought me into it, I liked it but never expected to be World Champion! Then we moved in '98 to Venezuela where my only option was to windsurf, we moved to the beach where basically the only thing you can do is windsurf the whole day, so my dream changed to become a professional windsurfer, so I did, I started sailing every day for 10 hours.

Started doing small events, then I asked for my first wild card on the PWA world cup in Austria, my dream started to come true. The year after, I got 2nd in the world really and got close to win my first world title. From 2003 until 2005 I became World Champion in the freestyle discipline.

Since 2008 I am dedicated to the wave discipline which is my real dream, I became a vice world champion twice and one time I got third. I still haven't reached my goal which is to become world champion, but I am sure fighting as hard as I can to get it.

I also love to spend time kiting, wakeboarding, surfing and Stand up paddling sometimes! I basically spend 90% of my time on the Ocean!